You have found the apartment, agreed the price and satisfied yourself that it clears $150,000. None of that decides your residence permit. The threshold is met on assessed value certified by an accredited assessor, and the assessor does not read your contract. This post covers who is permitted to produce that figure, how they reach it, why cadastral and market value are different instruments, and the three kinds of purchase that reliably assess below what the buyer paid.
The requirement is accreditation, not merely competence
Georgia grants a residence permit to a foreign national who owns real estate assessed at $150,000 or more, a figure in force since 1 March 2026. The permit category, its term and the grounds on which it can be refused sit in the Law on the Legal Status of Aliens and Stateless Persons.
What the law asks for is not a valuation. It is a valuation from the right person. The assessor must hold accreditation through the Unified National Accreditation Body, which maintains Georgia's register of accredited conformity assessment bodies.
That distinction does real work. A valuation from a careful, experienced, entirely honest valuer who is not accredited is not evidence for this purpose, whatever number it carries. The Public Service Development Agency is checking a credential before it reads a figure. This is the commonest reason a property application arrives incomplete: the buyer commissions a report, it says $180,000, it looks professional, and the person who signed it is not on the register.
How to find an accredited assessor, concretely
Four steps, in this order.
Start from the register, not from a recommendation. The accreditation body publishes which organisations hold accreditation and for what. Begin there and work outward to whoever is available, rather than starting with a name your agent gave you and hoping it appears.
Check the scope, not just the entry. Accreditation is granted for defined activities. An organisation accredited for something adjacent is not accredited for immovable property valuation, and the register records which is which. An entry on the list is necessary and not sufficient.
Check that the accreditation is current. Accreditations run for periods and are subject to surveillance, suspension and withdrawal. A certificate that was valid when the firm printed its brochure is not automatically valid on the day your report is signed.
Get the certificate reference on the report itself. The finished valuation should identify the accrediting body, the accreditation reference and the scope it was granted under, alongside the property's cadastral code so the report ties unambiguously to your title.
Agents and developers will offer you a valuer, and that is not by itself a problem. The problem is accepting the recommendation as the verification. Confirm the entry yourself.
Why the assessor does not use your purchase price
An assessor is answering a different question from the one you negotiated. You agreed what this property was worth to you, on that day, given what else you had seen and how much you wanted it. The assessor is estimating what it would fetch between a willing buyer and a willing seller, neither under pressure, and the evidence for that is what comparable properties have actually transacted at. Your contract is a single transaction between two specific parties, which is exactly what a valuation is built to look past.
In practice the assessor works from location, floor area, building age and condition, the state of finishing, floor level, and recent recorded transactions in the same building and the same street. Not from what you paid, what the developer's price list says, or what the property was marketed at.
This cuts both ways. A property bought below the market, from a motivated seller or in a private sale, can assess above the price paid. That is not a trick and it does not need to be engineered. It is what happens when the evidence says one thing and a single negotiation said another.
Cadastral value, market value, and the figure that counts
Three numbers attach to a Georgian property and they are routinely confused.
| Figure | What it is | Does it meet the threshold? |
|---|---|---|
| Purchase price | What you agreed and paid, recorded on the sale contract | No |
| Cadastral or registry figure | An administrative value held against the property record | No |
| Accredited assessed value | Market value certified by an accredited assessor | Yes, this is the test |
The registry entry at the National Agency of Public Registry establishes that you own the property and identifies it by cadastral code. That proves title, which is a separate requirement you also have to satisfy. It is not a valuation and does not stand in for one.
The trap is that all three numbers are real and documented, and only one answers the question the application asks. Anyone telling you the property "is registered at" a qualifying figure has answered a question you did not ask.
Where price and assessed value come apart
Three transaction types produce a gap often enough to plan around.
Off-plan purchases. You are buying a contractual right to something that does not exist yet, at a price carrying the developer's margin. An assessor valuing the completed unit works from what similar completed units in comparable buildings have sold for, and the difference between a list price and the resale evidence in the same district is not always small. Off-plan also creates a sequencing problem, because there is nothing registered in your name to value until the building is finished and title transfers.
Distressed and forced sales. These produce a price below the market by definition, and the assessment usually reflects the market rather than the discount. This is the pleasant version of the problem.
Related-party transactions. A purchase from a family member, a business partner or an entity you are connected to is not at arm's length, and a price agreed inside a relationship carries almost no evidential weight about market value. The assessed figure will be built entirely from external comparables, in both directions.
The pattern underneath all three is the same. The further your transaction sits from an ordinary arm's length resale between strangers, the less your price predicts the assessment, and the more headroom you need above the line.
Buying at the line is the expensive mistake
A purchase at $155,000 in a market where the assessor lands at $140,000 does not qualify, and the money is committed by the time anyone discovers it. The March 2026 rise from $100,000 made this sharper rather than merely larger: a bigger number leaves proportionally less room between a comfortable price and a conservative assessment. Budget above the threshold rather than at it, and commission an indicative figure while you can still walk away.
Buy qualifying Georgian property and get a renewable one-year residence permit. No job, no business, and no criminal record certificate on the published document list.
See what it costs, from $570
Combining properties, and what each report has to do
The threshold can be reached across more than one property. Two apartments assessed at $80,000 each satisfy it, provided both are owned by the applicant and both are valued by an accredited assessor. That converts a shortfall into arithmetic: somebody left below the line by the threshold change usually needs a second, smaller unit rather than a new plan.
Two practical points. Each property needs its own accredited valuation tied to its own cadastral code and title, not one report covering a portfolio in the aggregate. And each has to be registered in the applicant's own name, so a second purchase must complete and register before the combined figure means anything.
Joint ownership, and the structure that avoids the question
The permit rests on the applicant's own ownership. The registry records shares, so where two people buy together the natural reading is that each holds their share and each is assessed on what they hold. A couple splitting a $200,000 apartment in equal shares are, on that reading, two people holding $100,000 each rather than two people who both clear the threshold.
The published rules do not set out a formula for joint ownership, and we are not going to invent one. What we will say is which structure removes the question entirely: one spouse holds the qualifying value in their own name and the other joins through family reunification, which is how the route is designed to cover a household on a single purchase. One qualifying owner plus dependants is a case the rules squarely address. Two half-owners each hoping their share counts is a case they do not.
If a property is already held jointly and the shares are the problem, take advice before filing rather than after a refusal, because the fix is usually a transfer and transfers carry their own cost and timing.
Sequencing: which valuation, when
The order matters, and getting it wrong wastes either money or weeks.
- Indicative valuation, before you commit. Informal, quick, and the point at which a marginal property should stop being a candidate.
- Purchase and registration at the Public Registry. Until the title is in your name there is nothing to value for this purpose. The mechanics of buying and the agricultural land prohibition sit alongside this step.
- Formal accredited valuation on the registered property, in your own name, identified by cadastral code.
- Application with the valuation, title extract and supporting documents, filed under the procedural rules on granting residence permits.
Do not compress steps one and three into a single report commissioned before completion. A valuation of a property you do not yet own, addressed to someone who is not yet the owner, is not the document the application needs, and repeating the exercise later costs the fee twice.
Timing also interacts with the filing deadline. Applications filed inside the last 40 calendar days of your lawful stay are refused review rather than treated as late, and a valuation that runs long is a common reason people end up inside that window.
Valuation on the investment route
The same machinery applies where the $300,000 investment residence permit is being met with real estate. Only the threshold differs, and the gap between price and assessment scales with the number. Where the investment is a business rather than property, valuation is not the mechanism and there is no published figure to measure against, because that route is assessed case by case.
Our fee on the property residence permit route starts at $570 and includes verifying that the property meets the current threshold before anything is filed, which means checking the assessor's accreditation and its scope before the report is commissioned rather than after it is paid for. The rest of the document set is mapped in the residence permit document checklist.
The most useful thing we do on this route is tell people not to buy. A property that assesses below the line is not an application problem to be argued, and no covering letter has ever fixed a valuation.
Key takeaways
- Assessed value decides the $150,000 threshold, not your purchase price and not the registry figure.
- The assessor must be accredited through the Unified National Accreditation Body, and the scope of that accreditation must cover immovable property valuation.
- Verify the accreditation on the register yourself rather than accepting a recommendation from an agent or developer.
- Assessors value on comparable transaction evidence, so off-plan, distressed and related-party purchases can assess well away from the price paid.
- Cadastral and registry figures prove title and identify the property. They do not meet the threshold.
- The threshold can be met across several properties, each with its own accredited valuation and each registered to the applicant.
- Commission an indicative valuation before you commit, and budget above the line rather than at it.
Frequently asked questions
Who can carry out a property valuation for a Georgian residence permit?
An assessor accredited through Georgia's Unified National Accreditation Body, and only that. A report from a competent but unaccredited valuer is not evidence for this purpose, however sound its methodology. Check the accrediting body's register for the organisation and confirm that the scope of its accreditation covers immovable property valuation.
Does my purchase price count toward the Georgian property threshold?
No. The test is assessed value certified by an accredited assessor, and your contract is at most one data point that the assessor is entitled to look past. This is why a purchase above $150,000 can still fail, and why an unusually cheap purchase can occasionally pass.
What is the difference between cadastral value and market value in Georgia?
They are different instruments answering different questions. The registry entry identifies the property by cadastral code and proves who owns it, and any administrative figure held against that record is not a market valuation. The residence permit threshold is met on market value assessed by an accredited assessor.
Can I use one valuation report for two properties in Georgia?
Each property needs its own accredited valuation tied to its own cadastral code and title, because the application has to identify each asset it relies on. The combined figure is then read across those separate reports. Both properties also have to be registered in the applicant's own name.
Why did my Georgian property assess below what I paid for it?
Almost always because the assessor worked from comparable recorded transactions rather than from your contract. Off-plan purchases carry a developer's margin that resale evidence does not support, and related-party transactions carry a price that was never set by the market. The further your purchase sits from an ordinary arm's length resale, the wider that gap can be.
Can my spouse and I combine our shares to reach $150,000 in Georgia?
The permit rests on the applicant's own registered ownership, so on the natural reading of an ownership test each of you holds your share rather than the whole. The published rules do not set out a joint-ownership formula, so the structure that avoids the question is one spouse holding the qualifying value and the other joining through family reunification.
When should I get the valuation, before or after buying in Georgia?
Both, and for different purposes. An informal indicative figure before you commit is what stops you buying a property that will not qualify. The formal accredited valuation has to be done after purchase and registration, on the property in your own name, because that is the document the application relies on.
Does an off-plan apartment in Georgia qualify for a residence permit?
Not until it exists and the title is registered in your name, because there is nothing to value or to own before that. When it is finally assessed, the figure comes from comparable completed units rather than the developer's price list, which is the point at which off-plan buyers most often discover a shortfall.
Does the investment residence permit use the same valuation rules in Georgia?
Where the investment is real estate, yes. The accredited assessor requirement is identical and only the threshold differs, at $300,000 rather than $150,000. Where the investment is a business rather than property, valuation is not the mechanism and the application is assessed case by case instead.
What happens if my Georgian property assesses below the threshold?
The application fails on the evidence, and there is nothing to argue. The usual remedies are adding a second qualifying property to close the gap, or moving to a route that does not depend on asset value at all. Neither is available cheaply after completion, which is the argument for the indicative valuation beforehand.
